FBI Secretly Arrested a NSA Contractor for Stealing Documents

The FBI secretly arrested a Booz Allen Hamilton contractor working for the NSA who may be linked to the high-profile leak of the agency’s hacking tools.

Harold Thomas Martin III is accused of taking the top-secret computer code the agency had been using to break into computer systems of foreign adversaries.

“A criminal complaint has been filed charging Harold Thomas Martin III, age 51, of Glen Burnie, Maryland, with theft of government property and unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials by a government employee or contractor. “ According to a statement published by the US Department of Justice, search warrants were executed on Martin’s residence in Glen Burnie, Maryland, on August 27. Investigators found numerous hard-copy and digital documents that were classified Top Secret/SCI, the complaint says.

“During execution of the warrants, investigators located hard copy documents and digital information stored on various devices and removable digital media. A large percentage of the materials recovered from Martin’s residence and vehicle bore markings indicating that they were property of the United States and contained highly classified information of the United States, including Top Secret and Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI). In addition, investigators located property of the United States with an aggregate value in excess of $1,000, which Martin allegedly stole.”

Martin’s arrest and charges were first reported by The New York Times, which said Martin worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, the same consulting firm where Edward Snowden worked as a federal contractor in 2013 when he took classified documents from the NSA about U.S. surveillance programs and shared them with journalists.

Edward Snowden, the famous whistle-blower and former NSA contractor living in exile in Russia, expressed his surprise in Twitter, “This is huge. Did the FBI secretly arrest the person behind the reports NSA sat on huge flaws in US products?”